Industrialization and landscape: gum resin pinewoods of France, Spain and United States in the 19th and 20th centuries

Abstract

Gum resin as natural resource has a long history. In regard to landscape transformation has been quite decisive in numerous pinewoods, however, it is barely known outside places of production and consumption. In the last two centuries the demand of its main by-products, spirit of turpentine and rosin, grew exponentially while chemical industries such as paint and varnish, paper, rubber, soap, etcetera, were increasing its production. Considering that was necessary to keep the forest standing in order to get the gum resin I am going to compare the situation of pinewoods in France, Spain and United States, to show the consequences in the landscape of this industrial activity in different contexts and backgrounds. The most important cause in pinewoods transformation into «organic machines» was forestry, and politics; nevertheless, its application depended upon regional and national trajectories. The case of gum resin pinewoods is a good example of how industrialization had to deal with nature to obtain organic chemical products, studying intensely the mechanisms of the forest and the pine with the economical and ecological idea that preserve them was the aim, and so, transforming them into a crop of pines with its socio-environmental consequences.